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July 2016

Rilly?

And that Deutsche Bank has been waiting to slide into insolvency.

Given the source of that might think about buying some CoCos……

Err, yes….

An SNP MEP has told his colleagues in Brussels that Scotland should get a special deal to stay in the European Union because the “the UK is not a country.”

So that Scottish referendum on whether to leave the United Kingdom was about what then?

So the robots are coming to kills us all then

The use of a bomb disposal robot to kill Micah Xavier Johnson is believed to be a first for police.

“In my 38 years of law enforcement I’ve never known a robot to be used by police for an offensive situation like this,” said Dan Libby, a former chief of police in Punta Gorda, Florida, who works as an instructor in police tactics.

Bomb disposal robots are generally equipped with a “trigger” device such as a 12-gauge shotgun shell, concussion grenade, or water cannon that can be fired at a bomb to detonate it. “The idea is to shoot at the suspect device, not usually at a person. But in a situation like they had in Dallas, you use whatever means possible and I take my hat off to them,” Mr Libby said.

You want this game, oh yes you do!

Detective Hayseed : Hollywood!

Featuring a script polished into English by yours truly.

There’re plenty of American actors out here in Czech so we used them to do the voice work. But no one could handle a Pirate accent. Just couldn’t roll that Mummerset with salt off the tongue. So it’s been done in finest Bathonian instead…..what will almost certainly be my one and only acting credit in this life.

What we need to do now of course is actually get it onto the Steam distribution system…..which is where you can help. Click through and go have a look.

Equal pay for equal work

With prize money of £500,000 for just 49 minutes play, Wimbledon ladies semi-final ranks as one of the most profitable ever for a losing player.

Elena Vesnina made more than £10,000 per minute in a match in which she won just two games against Serena Williams, eventually losing 6-2, 6-0.

Williams’ speedy straight sets demolition of the Russian was in stark contrast to the five-set thrillers played by Roger Federer and Andy Murray the previous day, and has served to revive the debate over equal prize money for men and women at Wimbledon.

Hmmm.

OK, so, the start of the movie script is……

A 10-year-old girl is sharpening her sign language skills with an unusual student — her 7-month-old puppy named Walter.

The pair, who were both born deaf, became best friends the minute they met back in January.

“They’re the same,” Julia’s mom, Chrissy, explained in a video posted on Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA’s Facebook page. “She’s learned a whole other kind of love.”

And Walter’s learning a whole new way to communicate.

So far, the little girl has taught the terrier-chihuahua mix how to sit, ask for food and respond to his name.

“It seems like he’s picking it up,” Jamie Holeman, community relations associate at Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA, told CBS News.

So they’re out one day and they witness a crime and the crims see them doing so and hunt them down and they are able to beat the crims by using silent hand signals to get the dog to bite the crims on the bum so they fall out of the window onto a cop.

Shit, they’ve made fourth sequels to movies with less plot than that.

Actually, the entirety of French cinema has less plot than that.

Well, it sorta depends really

The former wife of a Russian oligarch is heading for the London courts to try to secure what experts predict could be a “stratospheric” settlement that would cement the UK’s reputation as the country favoured by the ultra-rich for their divorce disputes.

The larger the settlement the less one half of any future cases would like it to be heard in London.

I suppose this is the sort of shit you’ve got to say if you’re an artist

“It is absolutely extraordinary to see the transition happening to London,” Gormley said. “Up to this point the towers have been the exception, not the rule. But it is fascinating to see how London is being transformed overnight from a terraced housing-based city to Dallas or something closer to Abu Dhabi.”

Gormley laments the unchanging priority of corporate values over social values as the skyline rises higher and higher. “I don’t see those towers expressing much more than the testosterone of a late capitalist society,” he added.

The work’s title speaks to Gormley’s belief that we have all become “blind, sleeping servants” of a system that creates everything for us with ease and yet perpetuates social injustice and an unequal distribution of resources.

The most striking feature of the last 40 years has been how those resources are becoming more equally distributed. Idiot.

As to the testosterone the rest of us look at the skyscrapers as the efficient use of an expansive resource, urban land…..

Europeans, eh?

Belgian Neanderthals were eating each other 40,000 years ago, new research has shown.

The grisly discovery was made in a cave where scientists found bones bearing marks left by intentional butchering.

Not only were they cannibals, but the Belgians appear to have fashioned tools out of the bones of their own kind.

Belgians are a human subspecies that lives in Europe.

What a stunning economic finding

London’s outsized contribution to the exchequer should make defending its position a priority in the years after the Brexit vote, a think-tank report has suggested.

Centre for Cities calculated that in the last financial year the capital generated under 30pc of so-called “economy taxes”, the levies most associated with economic growth. The share of these taxes delivered by London has risen by five percentage points, as the Government’s dependence on the city has increased.

London and the SE (really, one economic area in many ways) are some 30% of the UK economy.

A blitheringly stupid idea

All British passport holders should pay full UK tax regardless of where they live in the world, in a move that would slash tax-dodging scandals and make the system fairer, according to the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI).

Quite why the professional body for investment practitioners has become infected with one of Ritchie’s ideas I’m not sure.

The Scottish solution

A Foreign Office Minister has poured cold water on Nicola Sturgeon’s claim Scotland could get a special deal to stay in the EU as the UK leaves.

David Lidington, the Europe Minister, said the “clear legal position” was that Scotland has to exit the European Union with the rest of the UK.

Nicola, I’ve an idea for you. If you promise to leave the UK then we’ll let you take over the UK’s position in the EU…..”

There’s a possible solution here

There is no body, admittedly, but when hordes of Far Eastern tourists began to descend on two very ordinary roads outside Oxford it appeared to be a mystery worthy of Inspector Morse.

Groups of up to 40 at a time arrive on the Seventies estate in Kidlington, always on Thursday, which is bin day, cameras in hand, traipsing over lawns, peering in windows, knocking on doors and asking for selfies.

Various theories exist….filming of Inspector Morse or Harry Potter etc. But no one knows the answer.

Hint for an aspiring journalist currently studying away among the dreaming spires. Get yourself out there on a Thursday (today! this morning!) and go bloody ask one of the tourists.

“‘Allo, whatchu doin’ then?” and an instant national article to kick start your career.

You know, actual reporting?

PS, Mail pays £1 a word.

Oh well done, well done!

ALL British shoppers could get £400 compo after scandalous £19BILLION Mastercard ‘rip-off’

MILLIONS of shoppers are set to receive hundreds of pounds in compensation as a result of a £19MILLION legal claim being launched against MasterCard over “illegal” card charges.

The number changes by three orders of magnitude between the headline and the sub. Pretty good going that.